Albert Corhay
In 2014, for the first time, the entire university community was called upon to vote for its rector. Albert Corhay was elected. His mandate was marked by the "Landscape" decree of November 2013, with a view to creating a European higher education area. It was also during his term of office that the University celebrated its bicentenary.
Albert Corhay was born in Liège on March 6, 1955. He graduated in Business Administration from the University of Liège in 1979, and obtained a Master's degree in Business Administration in 1981, during which time he worked as a researcher in the quantitative management methods department. Thanks to a scholarship, he began doctoral research in Finance and was awarded a Doctorate in Financial Economics from Churchill College, University of Cambridge, in 1989. His areas of research include portfolio management, the study of corporate risk, the study of anomalies in financial markets, and option pricing models.
He began his academic career at the University of Liège as assistant to Professor Pierre-Armand Michel in the Financial Analysis Department, before becoming Professor of Accounting and Finance in the Faculty of Economics, Management and Social Sciences, in the Management Department of the University of Liège, and also at Maastricht University. He also became a full professor at HEC-École de Gestion at the University of Liège.
This solid teaching background does not detract from his involvement in the governance of the University. After serving as Dean of his Faculty in 2002, he was appointed Vice-Rector in 2005 and Senior Vice-Rector between 2009 and 2014 under the rectorship of Bernard Rentier.
Albert Corhay began his mandate as Rector in 2014. He is the first rector of the University of Liège to have been elected by weighted universal suffrage by the university community. His mandate is part of the structural revolution in higher education in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, since the "Landscape" decree of November 2013, with a view to a European higher education area. Albert Corhay is co-president of the Liège-Luxembourg academic cluster, which covers both university and non-university higher education.
From the 2015-2016 academic year, Albert Corhay is piloting a vast internal reform, the reconfiguration and planning of research at the University of Liège, an operation currently underway, in the spirit of making visible the living forces and possible new interactions between scientific disciplines. The first phase of this process was the creation of a register of faculty and inter-faculty research units. In parallel, at faculty level, teaching is also currently undergoing a new planning approach. The combination of these research and teaching efforts has very recently resulted in a vast institutional strategic plan for the Bicentenary, which will position the University of Liège for the coming years up to 2020.
At the start of the academic year on September 21, 2016, Rector Albert Corhay presented his Charter of University Values " Study path, research path, life path ". He spoke of a necessity: never breaking the link with the city and its challenges. That a new strategic plan announced on the occasion of the Bicentenary is combined with, and rebalanced by, a Charter of Values testifies to the insistence with which the University of Liège intends to survive against all odds, adapting to change while preserving the values that underpin its uniqueness, identity, memory and future.
In 2018, the university community will elect Pierre Wolper as its successor.
Photo ©ULiège-Jean-Louis Wertz
